Instructors and Employees

Alumni

The Doctoral Programme in Language and Communication

The Doctoral Programme in Language and Communication serves the Department of Language and Communication (ISK), SDU, Odense.

The main responsibilities of the programme are:

To arrange disciplinary specific tuition for PhD students

To assist the students in fulfilling the requirement to visit research institutions outside of SDU

To help create a positive, intellectually stimulating work environment for PhD studies. The director of the programme is Dr. Dennis Day, Assoc. Professor at ISK.

The Doctoral Programme in Language and Communication arranges a variety of opportunities for tuition at the PhD level. We host courses led by local staff as well as colleagues from other universities in Denmark. The doctoral programme is quite known for its extensive network of international scholars who have held seminars for the programme on numerous occasions and participated in international conferences arranged by us.

In addition to PhD tuition held at SDU, the doctoral programme cooperates with Scandinavian as well as Danish graduate study networks. Within Denmark, we have for quite some time cooperated with other doctoral programmes in language and communication in Aalborg, Aarhus, Roskilde, and Copenhagen. We meet frequently so as to coordinate our respective course activities and we have an student mobility agreement whereby each course offered allocates places for students from partners in the network.

The programme has a logical and practical connection to the various research centers at ISK as well as other research groups formed typically through successful research project applications. Many of our PhD students are attached to these research units, most often by way of external project financing, but also by institute financing. ISK hosts The Second Language Research Centre (SELC), The Centre for Child Language, The Centre for Social Cognition and Practice’ (SoPraCon), The Centre for Cross-cultural, Interorganizational Communication Leadership (CrossCom),The Center for Communication, Culture and Society, The Centre for Human Interactivity and The Centre for Multimodal Communication.

Priorities for the immediate future at The Doctoral Programme in Language and Communication are improving the local work environment for PhD students and diversifying forms of tuition. The programme will host a PhD student conference in 2015 to encourage interaction between the PhD students and senior staff on issues of research as well as tuition. We arrange 'Underway Seminars’ and ’Trial Defenses’ for PhD students and staff, where students are encouraged to present issues of relevance to their respective PhD projects. Our ambition is to have more senior researchers and PhD students engage in lively, mutually rewarding exchanges, outside of, and beyond, the framework of classroom tuition and supervisory sessions. Similarly, with regard to tuition, we encourage new forms of tuition, such as 'master classes' and 'staff-led study circles', whereby PhD students can utilize the wide range of competences within ISK. We hope that this effort will provide a fruitful balance between our substantial international networks and our local competencies, as well as a rewarding mutual commitment between the PhD students and their institute.